i'm a sell out!

I just had to write a short note, since it had been a while since I posted last and I was waiting on finishing up some other stuff before I figured out "AdSense". I really wanted to get into the Dr. Phil show that aired today while I was otherwise unable to get online due to circumstances that I would not bore the blog reading public with.

The reason why I would say that I'm a sell out is simply because I chose to use the adsense system at all, and I can just guess what kind of ads will most probably appear here unless I start digging deeper to get rid of specific categories. My blog attempts to look at the phenomenon of obesity from as many different perspectives as possible, and now that I have set up the adsense system, my blog will most probably be selling diets and maybe even surgical procedures!

I just wanted to create at least one post to explain why my blog is going to appear to sell every diet under the sun while I write about how nearly every diet must be a failure if there are still so many people of size in existence at all!

I have probably done more than enough to separate myself from the generic size acceptance crowd, because I realize the failure of trying to make everyone "accept" fat people. It's very obvious after watching the "fat" episode of Dr. Phil that people have had a negative reaction to size acceptance, calling it "pro fat" and pointing out how wrong it is to exist at a size over what those individuals would say was "too big". I really want to get into that, but it is late, and I really have to do some work to at least try to catch up on stuff that actually pays the bills already. It would be a pleasure and a privilege to get to write every day to get more practice and put more of my crazy thoughts into the printed (electronic) word.

For whatever reason, the minute I figured out how to add adsense, I simply could not resist the opportunity to point out how cheesy it's going to be for people to be reading my words about the right to exist at any size and be hit up with ads for diets and possibly procedures that I personally do not believe in and would not attempt to advertise myself. I don't write just for fun, and even though I have plenty of doubt about the value of my literary contributions, I still have to at least attempt to get the slightest return on my investment of time.

I'm not sure it will even have much of a return, but I have to build up some confidence and assure myself that I am moved to write for some reason, and therefore I should use adsense on my blog simply because it is the only viable means of getting any financial return at all. I will continue to do my regular work and attempt to forge forward in this economic hurricane we are all experiencing here in the US. When I have time I will begin to transfer some of the many notes I've been taking while I haven't been spending a few hours a day typing.

I wish that I could have known before I started writing how much the act of writing can make one think and bring about at least some form of enlightenment. Since I have started to write, I have had to go to the trouble of keeping a pen and pad next to the bed so that I can write down the one singular sentence that somehow survives the trip to consciousness. Some of these waking thoughts stay in my head just long enough to write down before the thought evaporates and self-destructs in the awake mind. I'm sure this is something that most people experience, having some vivid, amazing, fantastical dream that concludes with one main thought that begins to fade with each passing second of being awake. It's really interesting that I caught myself attempting to repeat a thought just before waking up thinking that I can hold onto it long enough to write it at my leisure. No matter how much this seemingly important thought is repeated or thought about, each passing second of being awake has an amazing ability to erode the memory of nearly everything that happened in the sleepy nether world of the sub-conscious. Maybe with practice, or more research about how to retain these thoughts I will eventually be able to hold onto them just a bit longer, but for now, I get a chuckle out of some of the random and chaotic thoughts that have lasted just long enough to be written down before the invisible ink of the mind activates and steals those memories during awakening.

I will return soon to start writing about some of the concepts I have come up with, and I will also be too tempted to point out the way in which I chose to write about certain things that ended up coming back into the news within a week or even just a day of my writing about them. I have begun to realize that some of the existentialist philosophy that I have been ranting on and on about are already accepted concepts brought forth by other writers, sometimes hundreds of years before me. I have also begun to discover the wealth of research medium that exists online, such as google patents. Any time I think I have some cool new idea I can go there to be educated about just how long ago someone already came up with the same thing. :)

I just wanted to say again, I am a hypocritical sell out in a way because I will have ads for diets that I know are trash floating around in between my words. I know that I can block some ads, but I am on a practice run with this right now because this is all still my first blog experiment.

Something that I find really ironic is in the way that so much content on the net is currently advertising driven, and I have a few other domain names floating around out there that get tons of traffic but barely make any money. I'm sure that with a little research, this little blog experiment might have given me my first lessons in how other sites I already operate may some day soon have to be converted from membership revenue to ad based revenue. I could actually make more money, why not? :)

I feel really horrible about the way that my work has suffered for the past week or two. I spent so much time putting off the good old annual filing thing that I had to go into "red alert" mode by april first when I only had a few weeks left! Yeah, I actually found out how making even less money than in previous years had at least one advantage, lower bracket! :) I've often wondered why people on the far right have always talked about "punishing productivity" and how we are turning into a nation of slackers. Now I think I've got that one figured out! I didn't make less money on purpose, but hey, if you make less, you pay less! :) I will still attempt to make more, because there is that whole retirement thing to think of, and then there is the fact that I have to start denying myself some things now in preparation of having a brand new wonderful monthly bill for the new health care tax ... ahem, reform. :) I must really miss writing because this very post could have been one or two paragraphs and now I'm already up to over 1200 words! I'm just so old school though. Ad revenue is the wave of the future, but my very first experiments in web sites were always membership supported. Times change though, and I should just appreciate what's coming in instead of being disappointed in how much didn't come in. After all, I'm alive! As I write this I'm not in any severe pain, and I am not hungry and I can pay my bills and play with a computer that I was lucky enough to know how to construct. I'm lucky every day that I wake up with all my senses and enough money to eat and have all my bills paid. While I may not be able to pick up a flat TV or pay for digital cable, I'm not being kept up at night worrying about how to pay for that stuff. I may not have a fancy new car or my own house with a big yard, but I get to go yell at a manager when something goes wrong instead of having to shell out the money on a repair person. Every time I am moved to complain about something, I am simultaneously reminded of exactly how lucky I am if the biggest problem I am focused on in the moment is what I'm even complaining about!

I think I'm really lucky because I have been granted the opportunity of living just long enough to have come upon blog technology and begin writing out some of the random thoughts that my mind insists on presenting to me. It turns out, the more that I write and exercise thinking theoretically, the deeper and more philosophical that thought becomes. In the process of writing about the right to exist at any size, I have been forced to consider the way in which I have been guilty in the past of marginalizing the existence of others in some of the comments and positions I've taken. The fact that I would call myself a sell out for using adsense to sell crappy diets on this blog makes me aware of something I said recently. I have become just enlightened enough to realize with more clarity just how ignorant I really am. If I call someone out for being a hypocrite, I must also consider my own awesome ability to practice hypocrisy. If I call someone out for being hateful, I must recognize the ways in which I have been guilty of being hateful in my past. I wish that there would have been a way to encourage myself to think just a little deeper a couple of decades ago! It would be nice if someone would have taught me how to release ego and think from an outside perspective. It would have been so helpful if someone would have simply proposed to me a theory about how we are all running in circles in a loop oriented existence. A ring or circle appears to be solid yet there must be a beginning and an ending. Maybe the only way to escape circular logic is to attempt to isolate or identify those things that are so significant that they only appear in the beginning and the end.

I was tempted at one point to simply post a photo of some of my hand written notes, but it would be too easy to misinterpret my horrible handwriting and I would not want people to misinterpret my notes when I could simply write in such an ambiguous fashion that it's practically impossible to figure out what I'm talking about at all! :)

When I look back over some of the notes that I've taken over the past several days, I realize how I'm going to have to add some non-obesity categories to this blog, or start a few more blogs! My best bet would be to figure out all the workings of a blog by using this one for practice rather than attempting to figure out the science behind the blog and write for a whole bunch of blogs at the same time. Of course, if I was ever offered a gig writing for someone else's blog and it actually paid I would have to make an exception. lol Back to the notes though! Some of the thoughts that have been provoked while trying to figure out the obesity equation really have nothing to do with obesity at all or at least directly! After watching one talk show today on the subject though, I realize that the equation which includes obesity is so very complex that it encompasses several other phenomenon that the average individual would never associate with obesity itself. One could say that in attempting to figure out such an obesity equation, I have been forced to recognize the fact that there is probably a relatively simple equation to represent humanity itself. When practicing theoretical thinking and keeping in mind how nearly everything can be described in some type of equation, I have come to the realization of how mathematical the construct of our very existence actually is.

Wow, over 2k on the word count. Yeah, I must really miss writing! There was once a time when I fantasized about taking photos and making money. Somehow I eventually made that one come true. What confuses me as I write that is the way in which I have started to get burned out on that whole process. It would be totally ungrateful to say that I was burned out on the whole thing, but I have really lost patience with the many difficulties in dealing with or even finding plus sized models who would participate in artistic pro fat photographic artwork. I have to point out that there would be no shortage of women lining up to take pics if they could do exactly what they wanted and make some unrealistic sum of money, but we all kind of know how unrealistic that is. The simple truth is that to make any money doing anything in this world, someone has to want want something and someone has to provide it. While there are several plus and even super sized women who enjoy modeling, there is a virtual minefield of restrictions, conditions, circumstances, and unrealistic expectations that come with it. I have often described the search for artistic nude plus or supersized models as being mission impossible.

While I am sure I would never get tired of taking pictures, I have started to realize that I am plain tired of re-living mission impossible every time I get or send that first email to a potential future model. I have wasted so much time with those emails that I have even considered publishing some of the emails to illustrate how ridiculous and crazy this whole thing really has been from my perspective. I have shared my thoughts about this with a few other individuals, but even as I write this I have to wonder why I would be compelled to share it in my writing. I guess my ambiguity is painfully obvious at this point, so I'm talking about theory without having to give any specific information. I'm sure that if my written work is ever noticed at all, it will be inevitable that my other work will surface quickly after in some attempt to discredit or even marginalize what I have to say. It's so ironic then that what I have to say is inexplicably linked to my specific past experience.

Ok, this is way longer than I thought it would be and I guess I just needed a "taste" of writing to re-inspire and re-encourage myself to write even more. I already wrote in my notes or maybe here that the path to enlightenment must begin with a single thought. I never knew once I made that observation the way in which those thoughts would come rushing in once I started to research and learn. In ways, I have learned about things while writing that I thought I knew enough about before I started writing. In a few cases, I neglected to retain the most fascinating aspects of some subject simply because I didn't realize at the time just how relevant those aspects may have been to my personal experience or even my situation or circumstance at the very moment I was learning about those things the first time.

No matter what ever comes of this particular blog, I am still grateful that I finally took someone's advice and gave it a try. While I have doubt about the validity of some of my own theories, it is good to know that I can scribble my little thoughts somewhere that may actually hold some benefit for someone else. While I know my photography has had subtle influence for the past 20 years (yes before the internets:), I know that there is a potential for my writing to someday have a positive influence on more individuals than my photography could ever reach. Bye for now, see you soon, sorry about the crazy diet ads, but everybody gotta try to put their hand out, put their hat out, put the guitar case on the ground while playing to an audience of one, or none.